The United States is currently in the midst of an opiate abuse epidemic, and our president recently declared it a national emergency. He's promised to do a lot of great things, including increasing access to Naxolone and instating higher standards of pain management training for Med Students. However, it's Donald Trump. So of course his primary focus is increasing law enforcement intervention and cracking down on the users.
The way the world, specifically America, views drug usage has just never made sense to me. Even before I ever tried a drug. Video games? It's a hobby, nothing really wrong with it as long as you're not letting it interfere with responsibilities. Junk food? It's a bad habit to indulge too much, but it's natural to pig out. Alcohol? Nothing better than cracking open a cold one with your family or friends and having a good time. Even drinking daily isn't frowned upon nearly as much as it should be as long as someone isn't going through an entire bottle of liquor a day. Drugs though? Or any drug aside from alcohol and tobacco that is. You have a serious problem...
It doesn't matter if you're the most responsible person in the world, if people find out you enjoy the occasional psychedelic trip or stimulant you're automatically one week away from a dark alleyway injecting fentanyl into your neck. A staggering amount of people even look down on people who smoke cannabis, claiming that only losers engage in drug usage and that they're a waste of life. My father is one of those people, he despises anyone who uses any kind of drug except for alcohol, and see's no distinction between something like LSD and something like Methamphetamine. He thinks he's better than everyone else because he "doesn't do drugs" even though he's a mild to moderate drinker.
This mindset is the result of almost a century of fear mongering and propaganda against anyone who touches a drug, regardless of what substance it is. The war on drugs and D.A.R.E. still has so many people vehemently against any substance use. It's seen as a moral issue, with people often thinking of someone as a bad person because they indulge in the occasional psychoactive substance. Is there any good which comes out of this mass ignorance and prejudice though? I mean sure, maybe the occasional kid with an addictive personality was influenced to not try a line of coke with his friends in high school. However at the same time this ostracizes an entire group of people, oftentimes pushing them to do rather rash things due to subconsciously feeling as if they're a piece of shit, even if they only do drugs a few times a year.
Public Safety
With all this being said, should drugs be legalized? It makes so much more sense from both a financial and public health perspective. In the middle of the opiate epidemic we're currently in so many people have died from fentanyl laced drugs. In school kids were urged to never try pot as it was "often" laced with dangerous drugs. Although the latter is very unusual, it's possible. This is all due to the fact that these aren't regulated substances. When someone goes out and buys a tab of "LSD" they often don't know if what they're getting isn't an obscure research chemical that could actually kill them. The types of people I previously mentioned would simply say, "That's their fault for doing drugs then." This is the line of thinking which absolutely infuriates me. That person isn't hurting anyone by using a drug in the privacy of their own home, or in nature with their friends. So why the hell should it matter to you what they're putting into their bodies? If drugs were legalized, taxed, and sold legally then fentanyl laced opiates, 25I-NBOMe tabs masqueraded as LSD, and research chemical laced cocaine would be a thing of the past. These substances would be tested as 100% pure and people would actually know what they're getting. This would cut down on many accidental overdoses and unwanted reactions. Not only that, but the government would make an abundance of money in taxes.
Gang Violence
On top of this, everyone always talks about how horrible gangs are, and how these drug dealers will kill innocent children if they're interfering with their business. You know what would solve that? A safety regulated legalized drug market, with prices that these dealers and kingpins could never hope to compete with. What do you think these "Chiraq savages" would be doing in this world? They sure as hell wouldn't be killing each other over crack. So many people are unnecessarily killed each year over drug money, and our government has the power to stop it.
Personal Freedom
America is supposed to be the land of the free, yet a persons personal choices which affect nobody but themselves is prohibited by law, what the hell is up with that? The fucked up part is that neither of our choices of political parties will do anything to stop it. Conservatives call themselves the party of small government, and believe that they shouldn't have a say in how you live your life. Yet they have a moral abhorrence for drugs which overrides their political standing on a topic like this. Liberals claim to be open minded and accepting of the quirks and choices of others, yet they don't believe in personal freedom and think the government has the right to tell you what you can and cannot do.
The Prevention of Escalation
Drugs being illegal leads to users and distributors finding creative ways to get around the law, which often leads to far more dangerous situations. If heroin was legal and readily available then we wouldn't have been plunged into a fentanyl epidemic. Likewise, if fentanyl wasn't a scheduled substance than there wouldn't be analogues to it being developed every other week. What's terrifying is that these analogues are even marginally more potent than fentanyl, which already should have never been popularized. If amphetamine was never outlawed than crafty users would have never created methamphetamine, which is a lot more dangerous and much more addictive. If there wasn't a need for a newer, cheaper, and mass produced stimulant, then this oftentimes life crushing drug would have never hit the streets. There wouldn't be millions of sketchy research chemicals that teenagers order online knowing almost nothing about them. Prohibition hurts more than it helps.
There have already been countries to decriminalize drug possession, such as Portugal. And they've actually seen a decreased rate of drug abuse. Now, America's culture is a very different beast, and we'd be lying to ourselves if we said that there wouldn't be more people using drugs in the beginning at least. But once it's no longer a taboo and opportune thing then much of the allure of drugs would disappear. Kid's wouldn't start using them to look cool, and it would lend itself better to responsible usage.
Now I'm by no means the best person to find out a way to do this, but I have a suggestion nonetheless. Think about a world like this... All drugs are legalized and sold in stores across the country. However in order to purchase any substances you must be 21 years of age and meet certain criteria depending on the drug. If you wish to buy a tab of acid you have to attend a week long course on responsible usage of LSD. You would have to learn about set set and setting, trip sitters, and proper dosage. To buy cocaine you must take a two week course, which focuses on addictive potential, negative effects on the cardiovascular system, and neuro toxicity. Depending on how dangerous/addictive a drug is you are required to get more and more rigorous of an education on it. Yes, even weed and alcohol would require a one and two day course respectively. This whole program would be ran by the federal government and paid for exclusively with the tax revenue made from the drugs being sold. I don't know about you, but to me this sounds like a damn good solution to our fucked up drug education and laws. Yet this is something I just came up with on the spot, so I have no doubt that there would be kinks to work out.
The government truly should not have a say in decisions which only affect willing participants. If someone decides to use drugs then that's their decision, and shouldn't be prohibited by big brother. The same could easily apply for prostitution, which is another very similar issue.